


for those who remember

by Ladyboo



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Mission Gone Wrong, Tarsus IV, dad!chris, tw dead bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 10:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15046598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladyboo/pseuds/Ladyboo
Summary: He’d never written a condolence letter before.





	for those who remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bonnie_Bug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonnie_Bug/gifts), [borkybornes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/borkybornes/gifts).



> Once more, this is unedited, and the result of me going through my old pieces and trying to clean house? So, have at!

_ Starvation was a funny thing. _

_ It wasn’t, actually, and that was known, because it happened when the person couldn’t get the nutrients that they needed to function properly. At first, they were cranky, perhaps tired, depending on how the person dealt with that lack of necessary energy, and sometimes they just stopped doing things all together. What was the point in getting up to get food, if there was no food to be gotten? _

He didn’t want to ever get used to it. Death, that was.

_ They didn’t have a choice, not most days.  _

_ It wasn’t ever safe, staying in one spot when they sun started to peek. It was never safe, not really, not ever, but the darkness let them hide. The lights on the guard’s guns could only see so much when the air was thick with the musk of death and decay, when the foliage made everything dense and dark.  _

The day he got used to it was the day he stopped caring. Death mattered, when there were people to care about, when there was something to protect. The things that could do harm, the diseases, the possibilities, the injuries, all of it glared like a flashing beacon that faced the direction of what could go wrong. 

There would be no getting used to it, not while he had friends. Not while he had people he considered his family, not when there were those that he relied on, who relied on him in turn. He knew too much, had seen too many things and been too many places to not be affected by the feeling of death.

_ One of the children had bloated up overnight.  _

_ His little body had filled up with fluids that they couldn’t drain out, they had no way and didn’t even know where to start. He’d looked so miserable, with his little face puckered up and his fists clenched tight, but for once, they hadn’t had to worry about his crying. He hadn’t cried, hadn’t let out a single little whimper or whine that could have alerted anybody on where they were. For all that he’d bloated though, with his dark skin turning ashy, molten with speckles of eczema, he’d become so thin, little bones like sharp points under his flesh. The way everything had rushed out of him in fluid form had nothing to combat it, and he just got thinner and thinner. _

It hurt, to have to sit there and stare at the image of what someone’s face had looked like, once upon a time. The hair that they had had, the small smile that they had worn. The color of their eyes, the pigment of their skin, none of it mattered, not when they were dead and gone, not when there was nothing he could do for them. 

They had trusted them, relied on him, and he’d let them down in the worst way possible.

_ And then one morning, he just didn’t- didn’t whimper, didn’t shit himself, didn’t breathe. _

_ They’d had to leave him behind, and he’d tapped one of the girls under the chin when she’d started to cry, had pressed his knuckles to her lips until she’d stopped. They had no time for crying, they didn’t have the energy to waste on people that were already gone. For some of them, the hunger was exhausting, and it wasn’t safe to touch the water already on the ground, or to eat half of the things they found – himself, others, they could hardly feel it at all anymore.  _

They’d known what they were doing when they’d signed up though, their career was a dangerous one, and it spoke of darkness and death that they would never truly be able to escape. None of them expected him to hold their hand, to watch where they walked and carry their guns for them. They were adults, who had signed off for what they did every day, and they knew the dangers that they faced.

That didn’t make writing up a notice to families any easier.

_ Even if they moved, it wasn’t safe to be in the open, not for long, not in large numbers. Small groups were safest, little clusters of them that were harder to sight, harder to shoot. The children were too small or too slow from exhaustion and hunger to keep up half the time, and the river had nearly been their downfall in the end of it all.  _

_ He didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl that clung to his back, little fingers knotted in the tattered remains of his shirt where it hung around his throat. It was a choking feeling, but he kept his hands out in front of them, didn’t support the child at all. He couldn’t afford to, not navel deep in water that he couldn’t see through. The current wasn’t much, not fast or treacherous in the way that he’d feared it would be, but that didn’t make it any better.  _

He’d never had to do it before, actually. 

Somehow, he’d managed to keep most of them safe for over a year out in the black. No fatal injuries, no life threatening diseases. No person had gone AWOL, no one had been lost at a space dock, and everything had been going so perfectly. It only made sense, really, that eventually, it would all go to hell.

_ The stench should have been the worst part, he should have been used to everything else by then; there was something especially horrifying about the feeling of a water-logged, decaying hand brushing against ones ankle under the dirty water. _

_ The gag that bubbled from his throat was an automatic thing, as was the way that he stumbled. But he didn’t dare put his hands down, didn’t dare give the children behind him reason to think something was wrong. Because if he stopped, they stopped, and they would feel it too, and they would panic. There wasn’t time, they didn’t have the energy- he couldn’t let it happen, not when the other side was so close. _

Routine missions didn’t stay routine, not all the time, and he should have expected something. He was always being reminded to stay prepared, always being watched by one critical eye or another. He was too young, too brash, and everyone swore he’d only gotten his captaincy because of the men in his life.

As if he had control over an earthquake and the rockslide that had smashed the landing party in response. 

_ So he stayed steady, with a child clinging to his back and an unknown number of dead lying in the water around them. It explained the smell, it gave a reason for the color and consistency of it where the water splashed against his skin. Tilting his head just slightly, out of the corner of his eye, the bulbous form he had thought to be a rock of some sort identified itself as a head, nearly completely void of skin where the sun touched it, and his stomach roiled. _

_ The ground beneath his feet was dry, solid and sure, and he turned enough once he was steady to keep an eye on the others, usher them onto the shore with him. It was the only time they could afford to be clustered, the only moment of comfort he could give them with the sun glaring down on his head. And he shouldn’t have.  _

Only one casualty, he should have been relieved, only one of them was gone rather than all of them, but it wasn’t right. A falling boulder of all things, and one ensign on the away team who hadn’t paid enough attention when he and everyone else got out of the way. He hadn’t even had time to dive after her, no chance to try to save her: the crashing sound and the spill of red, red blood that had washed out from under the rock had left nothing to the imagination.

There had been no woman to save, because she hadn’t existed anymore. Her body crushed beyond repair, unrecognizable bones and torn flesh and he’d ordered the away team to the ship, and a med team down to collect what they could for her family. Still, the entire ordeal had him trembling, a fine shiver through his bones.

_ Rustling from the foliage ahead gave off a sharp, distinctive sound, and he turned, grip steady on the child on his back and his eyes latched to the tree line. There, coming through, were phaser heads, glinting in the sunlight, and colored uniforms that his starved mind didn’t understand, didn’t recognize. The full height of their bodies followed after, and their numbers left him trembling. _

_ Behind him, the children were crying, pitiful, exhausted sounds that he felt to his very bone, was surprised he didn’t make them in response. The child on his back, a boy, surely that concave chest belonged to a little boy, just clung tighter, and buried his face between the sharp jut of his shoulder blades.  _

Sitting at his desk didn’t help with anything, not even with the terminal showing the service picture of the woman’s face. If anything, that made it worse, because all she did then was stare at him with eyes that he knew weren’t there anymore, and a smile that didn’t exist. Staring at her didn’t do any good, not when he had to write up a report to her family, because the ensign had died. 

Daughter, sister, cousin or niece, she had been something to someone who he would never know, not past their name and a onetime glimpse of their face. He was supposed to write up the report to her parents, her siblings, that their little girl had died, and all he could do was stare at the terminal with her picture and the empty forms. 

He’d never written a condolence letter before.

_ Cornered, terrified and resilient to the end, he bared his teeth at the men in a feral snarl. _

_ “Archer, this is Pike, beam a med team to my location, immediately, we-fuck, we found kids.” _

_ That voice though, he knew that voice, knew how it sounded when it laughed, when it was rough from sleep, and the boy on his back started to slip. He didn’t care though, didn’t have the mindfulness to do much more than put a hand back to support the little one for a moment while he staggered forward. Arms out, face growing wet with tears, he was unrecognizable from the thin boy that’d talked on and on about wanting to join the Tarsus IV Field Assessment for the summer.  _

The terminal made a bleeping sound, and he tapped at it without even really looking, more concerned with the dead woman’s face on his screen than whoever was trying to talk to him. Still, the call went through, and he resisted the urge to rub his face in frustration as it connected. Instead, he stared at the just past the edge of the screen to the door that connected his office to his personal quarters, and wondered quietly why he decided to do this again.

“Rough day on the job, kid?”

_ Breaking then, Jim’s legs buckled, and the boy on his back scrambled away even as the men came closer to them, and the one that mattered recognized him then. _

Jim gaze dropped down then, enough to see dark blue eyes that he was more than familiar with, and an understanding smile that brought one to his own face.

_ “Dad!” _

“Hey, Dad.”


End file.
